Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; September 26, 2005 Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff, has been on display at the Met for more than forty years (it was shined and polished in 2002) and it’s still a delight to behold, and only a bit tattered around the edges. Zeffirelli is, of course, […]

Mostly Mozart Festival; Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, N.Y.; August 24, 2005 Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival continued with a varied, if not very surprising program on Wednesday night, when young Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard, fresh from his debut the week before, led a program of Mendelssohn, Mozart and Beethoven. Avery Fisher Hall’s new configuration, […]

Caramoor International Music Festival, Katonah, N.Y.; July 9, 2005 Over the years, Caramoor’s Opera Director Will Crutchfield has been concentrating on the bel canto period, with particular attention to the works of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. This season’s offerings – Bellini’s La sonnambula and the original version of Verdi’s La traviata – continue that tradition, […]

Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, N. Y.; November 6, 2003 The November 6th New York Philharmonic concert was one of the finest in its three-week-long Beethoven Experience series. First on the program was the Leonore Overture No. 2, which is similar in overall plan to the more familiar No. 3, but different enough to make […]

Carnegie Hall, New York; October 20, 2003 Pelléas et Mélisande is the most fragile of operatic masterpieces, a diaphanous web of brilliant orchestral sounds wrapped around an enigmatic story and declamatory vocal lines. Without anything approaching a conventional aria it almost defines the term “a connoisseur’s opera,” but anyone with an ear to hear, a […]